Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, on Sunday, killing scores of people, health officials said.
The strikes came as the U.S. keeps urging Israel to take a humanitarian pause from its relentless bombardment of Gaza and rising civilian deaths.
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, travelled to Ramallah in the West Bank for a previously unannounced meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Blinken, on Saturday, met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan. This is after he held talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu had insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until Hamas released all hostages held.
U.S. President Joe Biden suggested that progress was being made on the humanitarian pause.
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The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war reached 9,700, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have died in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have also died, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting. Hamas also took 242 hostages from Israel into Gaza.
Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, since Wednesday. This is under an apparent agreement among the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar which mediates with Hamas. (AP News)
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